On Superman Returns Vs. The Man Of Steel

Now for something completely irrelevant to anyone and anything. One of my best film teachers always said "No Disclaimers" before screening our work, but I'm disclaiming here: I found myself musing on the whole Superman reboot thing and starting writing this... and forgot about it for awhile, and then remembered it and so here it is. Enjoy! Ignore! Avoid the Green Lantern at all costs!

With the cast of  Zack Snyder's Superman reboot (now officially titled Man of Steel, and while we're on the subject, don't miss this highly entertaining account of Michael Shannon's casting as General Zod) officially in place, it's tempting to completely forget Bryan Singer's initial attempt at rebooting Superman for our generation. It's even more tempting to dismiss Singer's Superman Returns as a terrible film. I'm here to argue that, in the wake of the chilly reception of Snyder's Sucker Punch, we movie freaks might find ourselves wishing we'd stuck with Singer's vision. Let's explore why.

Bryan Singer is a great director. Let's just get that out of the way. His second feature The Usual Suspects, which launched the second major wave of Witty Crime Flicks (after Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), won Kevin Spacey and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie their first Oscars and became (and remains) the benchmark for modern-day, Rashomon-esque mysteries.

After following that film with his underrated Stephen King adaptation Apt Pupil, Singer invented the modern comic book tentpole movie (for better or mostly worse) with X-Men. That film, along with its even-better sequel, X-Men United, has directly influenced every major comic book film made since. If you doubt that (and if you're reading this at all, I'm guessing you probably won't), watch Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and note the similarities: both took a grounded approach to the world of the comic book superhero. As Roger Ebert noted, Nolan's film is not realistic, but it thinks it is. So does Singer's X-Men, which parallels the prejudice and hostility those mutants face with primary villain Magento's experience during the Holocaust.

This is the major break with comic book movies of the past, the "gritty" approach.  Even after the wild success of Richard Donner's Superman: The Motion Picture in 1980, Hollywood remained skeptical about the future of comic book flicks. Studio executives - flighty by nature, since they know they're about to fired any day for helping run the company off a cliff - remained unwilling to delve into that strangely fascinating alternate reality comic books presented. This was a world of amazing powers and larger-than-life personalities, of storylines that wouldn't work nearly as well in a novel or short story... these are colorful, violent, wondrous Thrilling Wonder Tales, best suited for a visual medium. Is any wonder that they adapted Superman for television in the 1950's or first tried Batman for the screen in the 40's?

Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan's involvement seem to promise a "grittier" Superman. I know the approach worked for Batman, but Superman has always been a much more colorful and upbeat hero, which the world of his comics generally reflects. Richard Donner's original film kept that color palette firmly in mind, and while Richard Lester's inane follow-up (let's just forget about Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, okay? I mean, watch it if you want, but even when I saw it at age 10, I though it sucked), over-played the candy-colored thing, Superman's universe should be a little bright and other-worldly.

Still, if Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan have balls, they'll color Supes with the Americana shades of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which has Superman ordered by the U.S. President to take out his pal Batman for good. Superman bows to the man, illuminating the blindly obedient dark side to a life committed to Truth, Justice and the American Way.

Further still, I may be completely wrong. After watching the Green Lantern flick with Ryan Reynolds (read my review on The Film Stage), I have to say maybe Nolan's approach to Superman will be the best way to do things, after all. Green Lantern was preposterous, (as is all comic book-related stories) and uneven, clearly fragmented from all the different script revisions this potential franchise was forced through.

The lesson of all this (for those of you still with me), is that these types of movies benefit from the focus of a singular vision. Christopher Nolan once said that as a director he's more of a human lens, focusing the hard work of hundreds of people into a unified whole (paraphrased). We can all argue that any fucking movie benefits from a unified vision, but Nolan's and Singer's films are successful because the studios footing the bill trusted the intelligence and confidence of these filmmakers and trusted their vision. Can Zack Snyder match that? Visually, he's got a dynamic style - but after seeing Sucker Punch, which is the first of his films he's written, I'll say he needs a goddam writer. Either way, I'll still see Man of Steel because the hope for a good, escapist popcorn flick is never a waste of time. I think.

The Dark Knight of the Soul (Rated Just Right)

To start off my long-gestating collection of well-thought-out (well, for the most part) essays on certain movies, records, books, comic books, comic book characters, graphic novels, graphic novel movie adaptations, adaptations in general, assorted collections of poems and overall - and in general - whatnot, I figured the most direct way to communicate what I'm getting at here is with the Second Highest Grossing Flick of Like All Time And Stuff - adjusted for inflation - Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT.

And it's rated just right. Which is to say: simultaneously overrated and underrated. Such contradiction in a work of art is not unique to the world of flickdom, although no graphic novel or nonfiction rehab memoir gets nearly as much press as some comic book movie directed by the "Memento Guy."

The Dark Knight was over-hyped long before it ever entered pre-production. Such expectations, having been amplified to a degree no summer blockbuster movie could ever match (the relatively hushed, expectant wait for James Cameron's AVATAR reflects the lessons painfully learned by a hyperactive ad campaign). The film symbolized a major investment in the vision of a director with but four features to his credit - each one terrific in its own right, including Christopher Nolan's own Batman reboot. Grounding the cinematic world of Batman in cold, hard reality was not only a great idea, it was kind of an inevitable evolutionary step in the history of a character that has become the most prominent comic book superhero in American history. Arguments for Superman are acknowledged, accepted, and to some extent agreed with, but Batman is now the indisputably most iconic superhero figure. The key to understanding Nolan's success with The Dark Knight is his treatment of the badass, schizophrenic main character; Nolan seems to understand that this borderline-sociopath is also the great divided id and superego of us sycophantic citizens of Americana, Inc.

Batman/Bruce Wayne is a screwed-up rich kid with a conscience and deep, almost Puritanical streak of basic morality co-existing in the same mind and body as an angry, blood-chilling crimefighter. The stories that have filled the comic book pages and celluloid frames reveal an extraordinary flexible character, a superhero of dangerous, sometimes frightening fire who is still a powerfully neurotic, deeply lonely and driven man, aching to erase a permanent open wound to his psyche. Like Superman and Spider-Man, Batman lost his parents, but right in front of his eyes. He witnessed cold-blooded murder at a point in life when most people have yet to form any kind of self-consciousness or individual identity. His family would have been his universe, as it should be for all little kids.

Yet all this Freudian fire and brimstone is still confined within comics or flicks or queerly campy (or campily queer, your choice) TV shows starring the Mayor of Quahog. Mostly. In The Dark Knight, the lived-in, anti-Tim Burton quality to Gotham City reinforces the shock at seeing Batman or The Joker against the background of a sorta-sane, contemporary world. Either figure's appearance is at once ludicrous and somehow deadly serious, almost a blight on reality.

After all, it's just a comic book movie. It's also a moving tragedy and an assured, epic-scale crime film, and if Nolan decides to make a third one (as he's said in various interviews, and then move on from the Bat-universe), it'll be welcome. In the end, his first two still say it all.